I was just wondering about the small scale turbulence in the atmospheres of the jovian planets. If we had an aircraft trying to fly through those massive storms, what level of turbulence would it experience?

Are there large streams /hundreds or thousands of km "wide"/ of laminar flow through these atmospheres where you could just "flow" with the winds and not really experience the fact that you are moving at 800 kph relative to other layers?

Also if you did hit turbulence, what would be the scale of it? In terms of acceleration how tough the ride would be?

I am asking cause I was just thinking about powered flight on a gas Giant, but Venus would be a good candidate as well. I am not sure where to find this kind of info.

Do I need to wait for Juno to get there and have a look, or do we already know this?

Or a "Jupitership", a probe that after its initial entry inflates a large envelope and heats it with an RTG or something. Becomes a hot-"air" balloon floating at some altitude in the planet's upper atmosphere.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

What kind of voltages are assosiated with a giant, superfluid dynamo? Is there any kind of corona on a gas giant? Is there any electrical or magnetic wind to the currents? If the center of the planet is in fact metalic hydrogen then the density of the core may allow it to absorb particles other cores might allow to pass.

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

I am thinking in terms of a type of glider that uses the rising air to gain altitude, and then while descending and moving forward it uses windbelts to get enough energy to run the electronics and actuators that move the wing flaps.

It also could be flying/hovering in head on wind, and use a portion of the oncoming wind the same way I described already.

So basically an aircraft or drone completely powered by the relative speed of the airflow around it.

I like the concept i dont think its an over unity energy cheat it might be that it could extract energy from thermals wind/power combined with gravity.

It's one of those, theoretically possible, but (currently) technically unpractical. It would require Unobtainium materials.

Not sure that they are technically Unobtainium materials any more but it would certainly take a skunk works black ops budget to even attempt to build at the moment and the skunk works are not known for building green transport systems tho i think the US Army recently bought 3 hybrid airships that could share some aspects of the tech mooted in the vid.

_________________Someone has to tilt at windmills.So that we know what to do when the real giants come!!!!

Good glider pilots in good circumstances can stay aloft virtually indefinitely; the only issue is that at some point the sun sets and thermals disappear. Whenever a glider is circling around in a thermal it gets accelerated upward while slowing down the surrounding air. So there is in fact energy being taken from the surrounding atmosphere, and it doesn't violate any laws of physics. And surely you could convert some of that energy to electricity using a ram air scoop, even while being carried upwards on a thermal, since relative to the surrounding air the glider is still flying downward in the same way it always does. It's just that it rises relative to the ground because the air rises more quickly than the plane descends with respect to it.

You can't hover on a horizontal airstream indefinitely; drag will accelerate you until you're moving along with the air at the same velocity, at which point you'll stall and fall unless you point the nose downwards in time to trade some height for horizontal speed.

So a Jovian glider could work, but I'd say it's pretty risky. Glider pilots on Earth look at the terrain to locate thermals. There's no terrain on Jupiter, so how are you going to find the next thermal? I'd prefer a solar-powered hot hydrogen balloon.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

By mixing a few ideas I have heard I think I know of a good mix, step 1 T.e.g. cell fires up, powering up essential systems, heat released is fed into blimp section, the thermal electric generator could also charge a capacitor before landing is attempted, that can be dumped into a coil, to make a initial burst of hot gas to inflate the balloon, also many small weather baloons could be deployed, initially for lift, and later they could detach and become expendable project delivery devices. Like double and triple doppler. Another piece of essential equipment would be a spetrogram laser and a gas chromography station.

Could a grid of nanotubes in a thin kevlar balloon create a baloon that was also the casing?

Devices inside could all have T.e.g.s so they stay warm enough, and the residual could lift the blimp.

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.